From Margaret to Mother: Movie adaptation of Judy Blume's story gives nod to moms
My love for Judy Blume started in fourth grade. I read her books throughout elementary school and middle school. One Christmas, my mother bought me a boxed set of Blume’s books. It included “Blubber” and “Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great.” I had read some of the books before, but I didn’t care. I read them again and again, but "Are you there God? It’s me Margaret” was always my favorite. It spoke to me and reflected my life at that time in a way I hadn’t experienced before.
When I learned the book was being made into a movie, I groaned. How many times had I seen movies based on books I loved only to be disappointed? (I am looking at you “Cloudy with a Chance for Meatballs.”) In the months leading up to the movie’s release, I read all about it to determine if it was safe to see it. Almost every review and story carried the same message – Blume was involved with and loved the movie.
With Blume’s stamp of approval, I went to see it on my birthday with my 14 and 18-year-old boys. They weren’t thrilled, but they agreed to go with me. That’s what they get for asking what I wanted for my birthday.
The movie brought up many of the feelings I had when I read it 40 plus years ago. Margaret and her friends spent hours obsessing about when they would get their periods and who would get theirs first. Buying bras when they really didn’t need one.
My best friend Jackie and I had the same conversations. Like Margaret and her friends, Jackie and I spent countless hours talking about boys, bras and periods. We made up dances to the Footloose soundtrack. We were JoJo Starbuck and Dorothy Hamill on a small piece of ice in my front yard on school snow days. The movie brought back those feelings of your first real friendship where together you were navigating becoming a woman, or so we thought.
The adaptation was just as the book had played in my mind when I read it, with one exception. As many reviews have pointed out, the movie expanded the role of Margaret’s mother, Barbara. In the book, she is present and supportive. She battles body odor, one of the scenes from the book I remember vividly, and loves her daughter. In the movie, she is a bigger presence with her own story.
The family moves from New York City and their bohemian apartment cluttered with paintings and plants to suburban New Jersey. One of the benefits of this move, Barbara explains to Margaret, is that she can now be a stay-at-home mom and be present for the moments in Margaret’s life she thinks she has been missing. When Margaret hears that her mom will no longer be working, she responds, “But you love teaching art.”
When Margaret says this, Barbara’s expression tells us what she is thinking, “Yes. I love teaching art, but I think being a stay-at-home mom is what I should do.”
It is at this moment I knew the movie was not only speaking to middle school girls, but it was also speaking to me and the other women in the theater who read the book 20, 30, or 40 years ago. It was as if the writers and directors of the film, and maybe Blume herself, were winking at me and all the other mothers. We know you, they were saying.
Like Barbara, I struggled with working at a job I loved and missing many of my kids’ school events and birthday parties. When my first son was 16 months old, I tried to be a stay-at-home mother and resigned from the job I loved. This failed experiment, as my husband and I call it, only lasted nine months before I returned to the same position because I missed it, and, with a growing family, we needed the income.
We had my second son and the older he and his brother grew, the more isolated from their lives I felt. So, I began looking for and found a way I could continue in my career and help pay the bills. This way, I could be at the 10 a.m. school recital and 3 p.m. tennis match.
In her review of the movie for NPR, Linda Holmes writes about Barbara, “… she becomes uncertain about what's a luxury and what's a sacrifice, and it creates a resonant parallel between her and her searching, curious daughter.”
When Barbara and her family move into their new home, she volunteers for every PTO committee because these are the experiences she thinks she has been missing out on. However, after cutting out hundreds of felt stars for a failed project, she realizes this is not what she wants.
At the end of the film, when another mother asks her what committees she would like to head up next year, Barbara says "no." She just doesn’t want to, she says. This scene takes place as she leaves a small art studio where she is now teaching.
The beauty of the book is that Margaret is on a journey. The beauty of the movie is that it also recognizes the mother’s journey and the women in the theater who grew up with Margaret.
